Test Results :: Middle Blue

Reichenbach Middle Blue (RL3018) is a pretty light aqua. The rods I had seemed to be seeded with itty bitty bubbles, which I found a little odd. There were too many, too consistently through the rods for it to be an accident (or maybe not?) and the result is sort of pretty, unless what you want is a smooth, bubble-free transparent aqua.

This colour, or at least this batch of this colour, was very stiff -- much stiffer than the other transparents I've tried from this line. Possibly because of this difference in viscosity, I had some dramatic incompatibility issues with this colour, which you'll see as we go through the tests.

Middle Blue darkens a little if you reduce it. I was trying to get it to turn red, but it refused to do that.

The left half of this bead was Effetre Light Aqua, and the right half was Reichenbach Middle Blue. You can see a compatibility crack around the middle of this bead where the two colours meet.

Middle blue is not terribly reactive with silver, although I got some yellow fuming in the middle bead which may be as much due to the Clear as the Middle Blue.

The middle bead is a core of Middle Blue, rolled in silver, and encased with Effetre Clear after reducing the silver. I'm not sure you can see all of the cracks in the bead from the picture above, so I included a photo of the bead in the two pieces that it divided itself into, below.

This kind of cracking can only be from incompatibility, so this batch of Middle Blue is clearly not a great fit for using with other 104 CoE colours unless you can find some with a comparably stiff viscosity. If you do plan use this colour with other glasses, make sure you do some pre-production testing first.

Middle Blue was not particularly interesting with either my reduction frit blend or my TerraNova2 frit.

Middle Blue is not a very reactive colour, but I did get some dark line reaction with Ivory. The most interesting thing about this reaction was that it happened when I used the Middle Blue on top of the Ivory, but not when I used the Ivory on top of the Middle Blue. I think this is because the reaction is fairly gentle and happens where the two colours meet, but isn't strong enough to wrap the edges. It's only visible through the Middle Blue because it is transparent.

I didn't make any surviving beads with this colour. I tried a goddess with some frit, but it is cracked all through. here's a photo of it anyway.

Test Results :: Heffalump

Creation is Messy Heffalump (CiM645) is a pale lavender that colour-shifts depending on whether you're looking at it under incandescent or fluorescent light. My photo tent bulbs seem to act like the latter, and I didn't get any pictures of these in natural or incandescent light, so I am sorry that I can't show you the slightly pinker cast these beads would have had. Fortunately, other people have been smarter and you can go see that on CiM's page for this colour.

Heffalump is very tolerant of different flame chemistries and doesn't do anything weird when you reduce it.

Here, you can see that Heffalump is a little bluer than the new CiM Rapunzel, but pinker than Effetre Lavender Pastel.

Silver on top of Heffalump reminds me of what happens with silver on top of Vetrofond Seashell Swirl. The silver turns greyish but with pink and blue blushes to it that are quite attractive if you reduce and encase it. If you don't reduce and encase it, it sits on top of the bead like a brownish crust, fuming the Heffalump yellow around itself.

Reducing silver glass is interesting on top of Heffalump because you get the same yellowing that you get from plain silver, only you get it in a lot of different places. I am a little in love with the effect of the blues and purple of my reduction frit blend on that background of gently yellow-fumed lavender. I didn't get a particularly nice initial strike out of the TerraNova2 frit on top of this colour.

Heffalump has poor cohesion, and separates on top of Copper Green, Opal Yellow, and Ivory. On top of Tuxedo it thins out and looks almost transparent and milk-mustachey.  When Copper Green and Tuxedo are used on top of it, it rises up around them in little halos.  Copper Green separates a little on top of Heffalump, too, but it's hard to see because this colour is definitely not one of the ones that helps keep Copper Green clean. Ivory separates on top of Heffalump.

Opal Yellow, Ivory, and Peace all spread like mad on top of this colour, too.

These are the only beads I have to show so far with Heffalump. I'll come back and update this when there are more.

Test Results :: Iris Dense Blue

Reichenbach Iris Dense Blue (RL3206) is a lovely colour, and much more fun to use than you could guess just by looking at an unmelted rod of it. It's soft as butter, very reactive with other colours, and lovely reduced. Let's look at some details.

Iris Dense Blue in solid-coloured beads is a mottled blue with a greenish cast, with dark veiny streaks running through it. I expected it to be brighter and sort of lividly blue, and this was a very pleasant surprise. When this colour is reduced, it develops a metallic sheen on it. You can see this sheen on both the middle and right-most beads, although for some reason it looks redder in the middle bead. I think that the amount of reduction alters the colour of it somewhat.

As I found in the rightmost bead, you can encase the reduction on Iris Dense Blue and achieve a mother-of-pearl effect. It does burn off easily, though, so you have to work cool if you want it to stick around. I managed to keep rather more of the reduction in this bead than I did in the pair of gobstoppers at the end of this post.

Silver spreads out and beads up on top of Iris Dense Blue. When the silver is reduced and encased, it forms a silvery blanket under the clear layer.

In the leftmost bead, my little fritty bits of silver glass developed an organic light border, and the surface of the Iris Dense Blue reduced to a gunmetal-ish colour.

In the rightmost bead, I got an interesting light border around all of my TerraNova2 frit and a starting  strike to burgundy, but no unusually great striking results.

Iris Dense Blue separates on top of Tuxedo, and if you compare the way it looks on top of Tuxedo to how it looks on top of all of the other colours here, I think you'll have to agree that it looks both brighter and bluer on top of that colour than with any of the others.

Copper Green, Opal Yellow, and Peace all separate on top of Iris Dense Blue, and Iris Dense Blue separates on top of them as well, a faint dark line running through the centre of its dots and stringer lines. It fumes Peace a weird greenish colour, both when Peace is above and when it is below it.

The big star of this series of tests is the behaviour with Ivory. On top of Ivory, Iris Dense Blue separates into light and dark, and throws a brown reaction line. The resulting effect is of a 3-dimensional set of stringer lines and dots that looks raised off of the Ivory base glass which is very appealing. When Ivory is used on top of Iris Dense Blue, the result is still interesting. You still get the dark line and the light outline, but because the reaction 'shadow' encroaches on the Ivory and not the blue, the stringer dots and lines take on a messier, uneven appearance.


Here are some beads that include Iris Dense Blue.